Material v maternal? It's a matter of choice

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A motherhood study has debunked the image of women who elect to be child-free as selfish, career-minded and unable to find a life partner - and what's more, mothers support them in their decisions.

Far from being career-minded, women who decide not to have children are instead influenced by their own upbringing, with many not wanting endure the same financial struggle as they had during their childhood.

Others cited a desire for travel, freedom, other activities outside work and not wanting to take responsibility for another. Only three of those without children in the survey cited career as a motivator. Two said their business was a factor.

The women most attached to work were instead mothers with three or more children. One mother of five spent just 18 months away from work.

The What Women (and Men) Want: Births, Policies and Choices study, by the Monash University school of political and social inquiry, interviewed 100 women and 14 men over an 18-month period.

Each person was asked a series of questions to garner their opinions on decision-making and children.

The participants were drawn from the cities of Maribyrnong, Casey, Port Phillip, Greater Bendigo and the Gippsland region - and were chosen because they either had high, low or average fertility rates.

One of the study's authors, JaneMaree Maher, said mostly a first child was unplanned and individual government policies had not affected parents' decision to have a first child.

Policies were more influential on the decision to have a second or third child, but this decision was also influenced by whether the experience of having a first child was easy or difficult.

When having subsequent children, women were influenced by policies on health, child care and education, rather than short-term measures such as baby bonuses.

"We are not seeing women focus on small amounts of money that alleviate the short-term stress, although they are important.

"They are instead recognising the long-term implications and thinking about them more deeply across a broad range of policies," Dr Maher said.

Work flexibility had a strong impact on decisions to have subsequent children.

"One of the big influences on whether women kept on having children was whether their workplace gave them a hard time or whether they could step in and out of work," Dr Maher said.

She said that the "motherhood wars" (between mothers and non-mothers), often quoted in media reports, were wedge politics and an attempt to oversimplify the issue.

Dr Maher said many employers preferred that mothers and non-mothers were pitted against each other rather than working out ways to keep them happy in the workforce.

The study also found that mothers respected the rights of women to decide not to have children and only two thought that sometimes mothers "whinged" a bit much.

Men were more influenced by traditional values such as providing for the family and being a breadwinner.